2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 356 Tech Guru

December 5th, the fifteenth day of the tenth lunar month.

Tan Jinyue is two years old. Even though Mr. Tan is busy with work and studies, he has to put down his work and go home to celebrate his little sister's birthday today.

This year, due to the leap month of July, the children's birthdays will come a little later.

Two-year-old children know a lot and can speak very fluently.

Tan Jinyue is currently 90 centimeters tall and weighs around 24 kilograms. She will grow quite tall in the future, so it's relatively reassuring to hold or lead her around now.

Tan Jinyue's outfit today is unisex: a dark gray sweatshirt paired with dark gray pants, a white cotton long-sleeved T-shirt underneath, white canvas shoes, and a red hat.

She was carrying a small water bottle, which looked incredibly soothing.

When the family goes shopping, other parents often ask Zhang Suzhi where she bought her daughter's clothes. Zhang Suzhi feels both proud and a little disappointed, and she doesn't know how to answer.

She was pleased with the recognition her daughter's cuteness received from passersby, but disappointed that her son had chosen all the more eye-catching outfits for her.

"I didn't buy these clothes, I made them myself. I make clothes and work in Shenzhou." Whenever this happened, Tan Jincheng would start making up stories for passersby.

Over time, Zhang Suzhi also learned this trick.

However, many of Tan Jinyue's clothes are indeed unavailable for purchase. Tan Jincheng draws them himself when he's bored, then asks the clothing designers at Jinpeng Industrial to make some modifications, and then finds the materials and processes them himself.

Some clothes are only produced in one or two sets, and once the samples are made, they are sealed away. They may seem like ordinary clothes without a brand, but the cost is actually quite high, making them rather luxurious.

There's nothing he can do; Tan Jincheng's aesthetic sense comes from more than a decade in the future. Most clothes these days don't meet his standards. He can make do with adult clothes, but he can't stand children's clothes.

Children, especially little girls, should be dressed up nicely.

So whenever he had free time, Tan Jincheng would draw some children's clothing designs and then have the clothing designers at Jinpeng Industrial modify and make samples according to his requirements.

Jinpeng Industrial has had a full-time fashion designer for a long time. Boss Tan often has some novel clothing styles that amaze them, but this is the first time they have met a boss who designs clothes specifically for his sister.

"Is this the happiness of the rich?"

They can't imagine the happiness of the wealthy, but they do understand that the clothes are stylish.
The company doesn't produce children's clothing, and Boss Tan doesn't care, but that doesn't stop them from secretly applying for patents for these designs in the company's name.

What if you need it someday?
This is called professionalism.

Beicang, as a newly developed urban area, is mainly industrial and there's not much to do there. Tan Jincheng's family usually goes shopping in the city center, where there are many more places to shop compared to Beicang.

Boss Tan was relaxed and carefree, shopping with his family, while Zhang Xuhui, far away in the capital, felt the pressure.

Since arriving in the capital, Zhang Xuhui has been mainly responsible for management and logistics. With the cooperation of Lü Ruifeng and the support of high salaries, the actual work is not difficult. Those who can be trained by Lü Ruifeng are all smart people, and no one would deliberately cause trouble.

But this time it's different. FlashTech acquired the equity of Bafang Electric. Since the two parties had a cooperative foundation, it wasn't difficult.

However, this time, without any prior cooperation or even contact between the two parties, Zhang Xuhui was asked to acquire the equity of a company located in Shenzhen under the name of Hangxin New Energy.

That's a bit difficult.

Although the boss said it didn't matter if it didn't work out and that they could look for other battery manufacturers in Shenzhen, this was, after all, the boss's first choice.

Lu Ruifeng was also a bit troubled. They both understood Tan Jincheng's meaning, which was simply to apply the recent research results to the field of mobile phone batteries. Acquiring manufacturers was indeed the best option, but the problem was that neither of them had ever done investment before and had no experience in this area.

"Let me first try to find out from experienced investors how much money we should spend, or maybe Mr. Tan can introduce an investor to mentor us. Didn't his Orange Technology do some fundraising before?"

"It's different, isn't it? Internet companies are all overvalued, but you can't do that to physical businesses."

"Ask the boss, no problem. Then we can temporarily assemble a negotiation team. You should know a little about this since you've been following behind Boss Tan. If we don't have enough manpower, we can borrow from Boss Tan."

An experienced veteran like Zhang Xuhui is worth two men; if he can't do it himself, he can find someone else. Besides, someone who's been in the system for so long has some influence, and he can eventually find a middleman in Shenzhen to talk to them. Zhang Xuhui understands this, but he lacks connections.

"Okay, I'll start assembling the team now. Please arrange the rest, Chief Engineer Lü."

"No trouble at all, it's nothing," Lü Ruifeng said with a smile.

Their wish is to apply the research findings to actual products, which will also increase the income of the research institute and themselves, allowing them to live a happy retirement.

FlashCheer is a young startup team. The earliest members who followed Tan Jincheng were all in their early twenties. Young people have drive, but that also means a lack of connections. Lü Ruifeng knew that Zhang Xuhui wasn't incapable of thinking about these things, but rather incapable of doing them.

This is FlashDrive's weakness, but fortunately Tan Jincheng also realized this. In the future, whether it is cooperation or the introduction of talents, they will lean towards middle-aged people, and it would be even better if they have connections.

This is also what Lü Ruifeng appreciates about Tan Jincheng: his ability to recognize his own shortcomings in a timely manner and to improve upon them.

The research institute in Beijing was thinking of moving south, while Tencent was preparing to move north. The performance of Happy Farm over the past two months had finally made the head of the QQ Space project team restless!
By the end of November, Kaixin.com had 1173 million registered users. After updating its ranking system, Kaixin Farm saw a surge of 383 million registered users, and its revenue rose from 123,000 yuan in October to 405,000 yuan in November.

A few hundred thousand yuan in revenue is indeed insignificant, and negligible compared to the marketing costs of Kaixin.com and Kaixin Farm. However, everyone knows that Kaixin Farm's paid items have not yet been released. Selling just a few skins can generate more than 50 yuan in revenue, which is already an astonishing figure.

Anyone who has made or played games knows that introducing paid items too early can easily disrupt the game's balance. Happy Farm is still in the user development stage, so there's no need to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

However, Happy Farm will be updating some items this week, namely fertilizer, but only low-grade fertilizer, which can be purchased with in-game coins. This is to help new users catch up with old users as soon as possible.

One update a month is enough for Happy Farm, which currently has no competitors; there's no need to update so frequently.

Kaixin.com has over 1000 million registered users, so QQ Space isn't envious at all. After all, QQ Space is still ranked number one among social networking sites, and with the strong support of QQ, its position is unshakeable.

However, they envy Happy Farm's ability to generate revenue. It's a game with unlimited potential. If Happy Farm could be introduced to QQ Space, it would not only increase the number of QQ Space users but also bring continuous revenue.

Making games is indeed profitable. Since the company changed its strategy and started making games, the method of using QQ users to drive traffic to games has been deeply integrated into various Tencent project teams, and the Qzone project team is naturally well aware of its significance.

QQ Space, which is deeply integrated with QQ, has been a key project for Tencent since its launch, with various resources being allocated to the project team. Even after Weibo was launched in 09 and swept the market, Tencent was forced to follow suit and create Weibo, but it still could not shake the position of QQ Space.

The highly concentrated resources also mean that the project team must produce results, otherwise they will not be able to explain themselves to the company and shareholders, a fact that all members of the project team are aware of.

QQ Zone needs Happy Farm to increase its revenue and user base, and Orange Technology also needs QQ's resources; both parties are willing to cooperate.

On December 6th, Huang Xitong, the project manager and technical director of QQ Space, personally flew to Ningbo to discuss cooperation terms for Happy Farm with Orange Technology.

The decision to set the date for December 6th, the day after Tan Jinyue's birthday, was made by Tan Jincheng after hearing that this bigwig had come to talk to him personally.

Believe it or not, Tan Jincheng actually knew this person. At the beginning of the year he was reborn, news broke online that this T13 level bigwig, who had led QQ Space to its glory days and then declined with the changing times, and who had worked for Tencent for 16 years, had been laid off.

Yes, they were laid off, not retired.

This man is quite a legendary figure. A graduate of Sichuan University, he changed jobs seven times in six years before joining Tencent. He worked as a fitter, a carpenter, and even started his own business. Later, he became famous on a programmer's website and was appreciated by a mentor at Tencent, which led to his joining the company.

Originally a backend Java developer, he took charge of the QQ Space project after joining Tencent, and successfully completed the frontend web project, which is quite a miracle.

As a post-80s generation with deep affection for QQ Space, Tan Jincheng didn't cancel his annual Yellow Diamond membership until 2021, which shows how much he loved it.

When Tan Jincheng saw the news about this laid-off employee, he specifically searched for this legendary figure. He was able to work at the highly competitive Tencent for 16 years and be in charge of the same project, rising to the T13 level. He had many other impressive achievements afterward.

The most famous example is the 404 missing person search, which helped Tencent, which had a very bad reputation, regain a lot of goodwill. The ultimate fate of such a technical genius was to be laid off, which is somewhat regrettable.

The reason Tan Jincheng personally came forward to discuss the cooperation was not only to express his emphasis on working with the QQ Space project team, but also because he wanted to meet this technical expert in person.

For the head of a key project to end up being laid off after 16 years without any advancement, there must be some flaws in his personality.

He's a tech genius, and Tan Jincheng can understand that he might have a somewhat eccentric personality. But what if there was a chance to poach him from Orange Technology? Wouldn't that perfectly complement Gu Qingqing and Tan Jincheng, who don't understand technology?
(Little Ma: I want to work with you, you want to poach my people???)

(End of this chapter)